Learn about the weird reason why revolving doors were invented; why people who can admit what they don’t know tend to know more; and why a thought experiment called the trolley problem may be more relevant than ever. Please support our sponsors! Get your first month of KiwiCo FREE by visiting https://www.kiwico.com/curiosity. In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: This Is the Weird Reason Revolving Doors Were Invented — https://curiosity.im/2XoJAHg People Who Can Admit What They Don't Know Tend to Know More — https://curiosity.im/2XsreFh The Trolley Problem Is a 50-Year-Old Moral Dilemma — https://curiosity.im/2MJUDH2 Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Learn about the weird reason why revolving doors were invented; why people who can admit what they don’t know tend to know more; and why a thought experiment called the trolley problem may be more relevant than ever.
Please support our sponsors! Get your first month of KiwiCo FREE by visiting https://www.kiwico.com/curiosity.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/admit-what-you-dont-know-moral-dilemmas-of-self-driving-cars-and-revolving-door-origins
CODY: Hi! We’re here from curiosity-dot-com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about the weird reason why revolving doors were invented; why people who can admit what they don’t know tend to know more; and why a thought experiment called the trolley problem may be more relevant than ever.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
This Is the Weird Reason Revolving Doors Were Invented — https://curiosity.im/2XoJAHg (from next Friday; already finalized) (Ashley)
Legend has it that revolving doors were invented for a weird reason, and the way we use them these days might be just about as strange. So let’s talk about the guy who invented revolving doors, Theophilus van Kannel [link to pronunciation]. According to the podcast 99-percent invisible, he came up with the idea because, quote, “There was nothing he despised more than trying to walk in or out of a building and locking horns with other men in a game of 'oh you first, I insist,” unquote. Yeah — he basically just didn’t want to deal with figuring out who should open the door. So in 1888, he patented the first revolving door, which he called a “storm-door structure,” which included weather stripping to prevent energy loss. In 1889, the first revolving door was installed at a Times Square restaurant called Rectors. Revolving doors actually do solve a lot of problems: they help regulate temperature and air pressure, which can save up to 30 percent of energy costs. An MIT study also found that they exchange eight times less air than traditional doors. Sounds great, right? Well unfortunately, That same MIT study found that only 20 to 30 percent of people actually use revolving doors, while the rest head for the traditional doors. And as for how people DO use them, they’re kind of an etiquette nightmare. The website RealSimple asked its readers whether women should go first in a revolving door situation, and about half of the readers said yes. That’s at the level of chance — not a good sign for the next time you're facing off with a stranger at a revolving door. On the other hand, Park Hyatt Chicago doorman Joe Snyder says that because the first person to go through has to do most of the pushing, a gentleman should always go first. Seems this invention is just one more example of how when you fix one problem, sometimes you create more. [ad lib]
People Who Can Admit What They Don't Know Tend to Know More — https://curiosity.im/2XsreFh (Cody)
If you’ve ever been accused of being a know-it-all, then listen up. Because a series of five new studies from Pepperdine University suggests that people who can admit when they don’t know something tend to actually have more knowledge. These studies measured something called intellectual humility. That means having the insight and honesty to admit when you're ignorant about, or inexperienced with, an issue. This is different than general humility, which is defined as the virtue of acknowledging your limitatons. For a long time, scientists have associated general humility with more academic learning and better grades. That's probably because you have to realize you have things to learn, in order to learn successfully. Intellectual humility is less about your general weaknesses, and more about dealing specifically with intellectual fallibility. You’re intellectually humble when you realize that your ideas and opinions might be wrong. It involves being open to new information and, according to the authors of the new study, “a healthy independence between intellect and ego." The team engaged nearly 12-hundred participants in their studies, and they used questionairres testing participants’ cognitive abilities, their predictions of those abilities, and their levels of intellectual humility. For the last part, the researchers used lots of different psychological scales and models, to get more accurate results. And the team found that intellectual humility was associated with more general knowledge, though not greater cognitive ability. As in, people who are intellectually humble aren't smarter, but they do tend to know more than those who aren't. The researchers think this leg-up on knowledge is because that humility leads directly to taking actions that can lead people to learn more — things like reflective thinking, intellectual curiosity, and openness. The team also noted that past studies suggest that as people gain knowledge, they see an increase in intellectual humility. Basically, humility and knowledge are linked, though it's hard to know which comes first. The best thing to remember is that curiosity seems to be a good thing. The world is big, and it's impossible to know everything. And if you want to make those people think you're smart, maybe the best thing to say is "I don't know."
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ASHLEY: Today’s episode is sponsored by KiwiCo. With KiwiCo’s innovative projects, you can empower your kids to be creative, confident, and fearless in all their endeavors.
CODY: KiwiCo (KEY-WEE-COH) creates super cool hands-on projects for kids to make learning about STEAM fun! They come in a subscription box, and the contents are designed by experts and tested by kids. That means you don’t have to research or worry about gathering all the supplies!
ASHLEY: You know being a parent means you’re super busy and pretty much always on the go. So KiwiCo makes it easy for you to work together with your child to create an engaging and fun project, with several lines to choose from for kids of all ages.
CODY: I stopped by to see a couple friends last weekend and they had JUST gotten a Kiwi Crate with a little project to make a light box thing with lessons on how lights and the color spectrum works, and their kids were SO into it. Their 6-year-old son went into like, super-methodical building mode, and was analyzing how to put it together and really focused on the instructions. And his little sister’s about to turn 5, and as soon as she saw the stickers, it was game over. Stickers actually played a role in how the thing functioned, so everybody learned something. I’m sure you can imagine a 5- and 6-year-old don’t always get along, but they were so into the project, there was no fighting or screaming or anything. And there was a whole SECOND project in the box I didn’t even get to see them put together.
ASHLEY: KiwiCo is a convenient, affordable way to encourage your children to be anything they want to be. There’s no commitment, you can cancel anytime. Monthly options start at $19.95 a month, including shipping. And as a Curiosity Daily listener, you can go to kiwico-dot-com-slash-CURIOSITY to get YOUR FIRST MONTH FREE.
CODY: Every day counts when it comes to making a difference, so don’t miss out on this amazing opportunity! Again, go to kiwico-dot-com-slash-CURIOSITY and get YOUR FIRST MONTH FREE. That’s kiwico-dot-com-slash-CURIOSITY.
The Trolley Problem Is a 50-Year-Old Moral Dilemma — https://curiosity.im/2MJUDH2 (Ashley)
We’re wrapping up with some variations on a classic thought experiment, because it’s the kind of thinking that we need to explore with the spread of artificial intelligence. I’m talking about the 50-year-old moral dilemma called the trolley problem. It goes like this: A runaway trolley is on a track set to hit five unsuspecting rail workers. If it hits them, they will definitely die. You happen to be standing next to a switch that could divert the train onto a separate track, where only one rail worker is standing. If you flip the switch, the five workers will be saved, but the single worker will be killed. Would you flip the switch? The trolley problem was first posed in 1967, and it led to lots of variations. See if these small adjustments change your answer. What if instead of flipping a switch, you’re the driver of the runaway trolley? Same options: you can do nothing and kill 5 workers, or swerve to the left and kill one. What do you do? Or how about this one: You’re standing on a footbridge above the track where the runaway trolley is about to hit 5 people. There’s a stranger standing next to you, and if you push that stranger onto the tracks, he would die, but it would stop the trolley and save the other 5 workers. Do you push him? How about the same situation, but instead of that person being an innocent bystander, it’s the man who cut the brakes on the trolley in the first place? Do you push HIM to save those five people? These slight changes in the trolley problem actually trigger different parts of our brains. In the switch-flipping scenarios, researchers have measured increased activity in the prefrontal cortex, which is associated with logic, reason, and problem-solving. But in the person-pushing scenarios, they’ve measured increased activity in the amygdala, which plays an important role in fear and the fight-or-flight response, among other emotional processes. Most people will never have to make a decision like the one in the trolley problem. But self-driving cars will. When faced with a lethal crash, do we want them to make the cool, calculated decision to kill fewer people in every scenario — even if that includes you, the driver — or do we want them to take other elements into account? The life-or-death issue is a conundrum engineers face today, and it's not clear that we'll ever have the right answer.
CODY: Let’s do a quick recap of what we learned today. But first, we want to thank our Patrons for bringing you today’s ad-free episode. A very special thank you to Ben Urick, Gautam and Priyanka Ankam, John Friesen, Eddy Young, and Emily for supporting our show. Okay, so what did we learn today?
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